Semi excited about Feral Kitty in MoP

Lets take a look at the new talents available, and let me start by saying it’s weird to have a bunch of talents to choose from that don’t necessarily give any kind of advantage to my main role as a damage dealer. Here is a LINK to the full descriptions of every talent.

The first choice is between Feline Swiftness, Displace Beast, and Tireless Pursuit. I think the constant 20% increase to speed while in cat form is a no brainer here, the others look more useful for PvP. Granted there might be particular PvE boss encounters that might favor one of the others but in general I think FS is the way to go.

The next level we choose between Nature’s Swiftness, Renewal, and Cenarion Ward. Let me say that I like the last option the best as it gives us the ability of an instant cast HoT while in Cat form. This screams raid utility to me and from a kitty that prides himself on helping the raid beyond just dealing damage I like the difference this could make in a PvE encounter.

Next we choose between Faerie Swarm, Mass Entaglement, and Typhoon. I think here Typhoon will be what I choose, an in Cat form knockback… SWEET! Faerie Swarm is replacing FF and depending on raid comp might be needed instead but I raid 25 man I am going to wager the debuff can be applied by someone else. The ME talent might be useful in certain encounters but is not castable in Cat form so I kinda don’t like it.

The next level we have Wild Charge, Incarnation, and Force of Nature. From a shear DPS vantage point I kinda like Force of Nature if the trees do high damage. It’s castable in Cat form and easy DPS. The other 2 talents sound similar with one having a charge component and the other one not. Wild Charge seems pretty dumb actually, It puts me behind the boss and lets me ravage without a positioning requirement… ah… yeah, ok. Incarnation looks the best, which allows ravages from behind without the need of being in stealth. It looks like with this talent we would open with berserking and ravaging our butts off with the 50% increase to crit with ravage at boss health above 80%…. interesting.

The next level is my first disappointment. 2 of the 3 choices are basically for bear as using them puts us into bear form automatically. So we choose from Demo Roar, Bear Hug, and Ursol’s Vortex. I am so picking UV here, not that as a kitty we have much choice. It’s an AoE grip usable in Cat form. That is just sick OP if you think about it. In PvE we get to suck mobs to us and swipe… I freaking love it. It makes us an adds magnet (or lets us pick a spot for the magnet) for 15 seconds. Honestly this is probably an awesome raid utility on fights with a pesky add phase.

Our last selection at level 90 is a complete disappointment. Heart of the Wild, Master Shapeshifter, Distanglement. HotW is most likely the given as it takes Hit to 100% and gives us an INT boost from agility which will improve our utility heals. The other 2 look very PvP centric.

The last cool thing to note, and I don’t know how the heck they are going to actually get this to work in game is Symbiosis. Basically we get to target another player and grab an ability belonging to that targets class within the limits of our specialization. This has buggy written all over it imho. Our target gets one of our abilities, also based on our spec. It sounds pretty cool as we get the special for an hour and it lasts through death so basically we will be doing this before a fight starts but I might see where a mid fight application might prove useful. If we get to use this attack in kitty form I say cool, Kitty Pyro? Kitty Chain Lightning? Ok, probably not since we would have to be in boom spec for that I would guess. So Kitty FoK / Swipe AoE craziness? Lots of possibilities here and I am sure some leet guild will figure out some way to exploit this running a party of half druids to down some heroic boss.

All in all, I guess these changes have the ability to drastically change the way we play our kitty. The question is do we use this stuff? Does it matter in terms of DPS? Will it make playing more fun? My guess is at first playing might be more entertaining but in the end if my damage sucks I won’t be happy.